Tuesday, June 3, 2008

My baking extravaganza has begun for the King George Public School street fair! (Now there's a school name you won't see south of the border.) Being the nerd that I am I have created a spread sheet to map out rising and baking times so that I can pull everything off for Saturday. I made more hamburger buns today since they were such a success I felt I needed to add them to the list of items for my bake table. Today, though, I made them with my stand mixer. It really saved a lot of time and made the recipe a whole lot easier. So, here is the recipe as I made it. A kitchen scale is needed to measure ingredients and to make sure that the buns are of uniform size.

INGREDIENTS

- 690 grams (24 oz/5 cups) all purpose flour

- 290 grams (10 oz/scant 1 1/4 cup) water

- 200 grams (7 oz/1 cup less 1 tbsp) soy milk

- 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

- 2 tsp sea salt

- 30 grams (2 tbsp + 2 tsp) olive oil

METHOD

1. Mix flour, water, and soy milk together with the dough hook attachment until combined into a rough dough. Let sit for 20 mins.

2. Using the dough hook, work the yeast into the dough, then the salt, and finally the olive oil. Add extra flour until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl and knead for 5 mins. The final dough will be sticky when you remove it from the dough hook. After kneading, transfer to a large well-oiled bowl, turning to coat dough.

3. Cover, and let dough rise in a warm place for one hour. Remove dough from bowl place it on the counter, smooth side down. Whack the dough with a flat palm to degas it. Gently stretch the sides of the dough then fold them into the centre. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Return dough to bowl and cover.

5. Weigh the dough on your scale (should be about 1257 grams) then turn out onto a floured surface. Divide that number by 12 to determine the weight of each bun (should be about 104 grams). Weigh out a piece of dough, then repeat step 3 to shape the bun. After folding, pinch dough with your thumb and forefinger from the sides into the bottom of the dough ball to create tension on the top surface. Seal the seams by pressing ball in the palm of your hand. Dust bottom with flour and place on a baking sheet (leave an inch or so of space around each bun). Repeat with remaining dough. You will probably need 2 baking sheets.

6. Spray buns lightly with oil and press down on them with splayed fingers to flatten. Cover with a towel and let rise for 45 mins.

7. Preheat oven to 450 degrees while buns are rising. Right before the buns go into the oven, gently press down on them once again to flatten. Brush with soy milk and top with sesame seeds (optional). Bake for 10-11 mins, then remove from pan into cooling racks. Only bake 1 sheet at a time.

Because I wasn't sure if I or anyone else in my house would eat 24 buns, I halved the recipe, and then made the buns bigger so there were 8 buns instead of 12. Anyways, it's funny because a family member of mine who was helping me with the recipe was complaining about how the recipe wasn't using a bread machine, and that the dough had to be weighed on a scale (which we didn't have, so we skipped that). However, when the buns were done, she said they came out great and then took one without my permission, lol. With my food allergies to dairy, eggs, ALL nuts and most meat, I've never been able to eat a regular hamburger. So this was a treat for me. Now it's just a matter of finding foods to put in the hamburger, because I don't know what I like yet!

To anyone allergic to sesame seeds like me, you can replace them with chopped onion flakes, or even the seeds from inside of a green pepper. Actually, you can probably use other seeds, too. :)

This recipe is great! At first, I was like "whoa, do I really need to go through all these stages of rising?" but then when I baked them, the texture was super amazing. Thank you! Oh, and by the way, if you bake the second set of rolls for an extra 10 or 15 minutes while you watch TV with the kids, they end up getting as hard as a rock. *Laughs*

Seriously love your blog, and my boy does too! He's only 11 months but DEVOURS the tempeh burgers and vegan sausages! THANK YOU for sharing all this with us. We just moved to middle-of-nowhere Kansas from Houston, TX and we were getting a little discouraged (can't find too many vegan options out here in the Mid-West) and thought our kid was never going to go for this type of food.

WOW. After a failed attempt with a different recipe earlier today, I found these ... and they're insanely delicious. I've never seen a more perfect hamburger bun. Crusty outside, fluffy inside, yeasty smell, perfectly browned tops. THANKS for sharing this recipe!!

Nice recipe! I wanted to shave off some time, so I made an adjustment: activate the yeast first (in warm water with a pinch of sugar), and add it at the beginning. Then cut the rise time down to two half-hour segments with a punch-down in between. I recommend folding instead of actually punching, because you want a few big bubbles in there to keep the buns from being too dense. Also, slash before baking. I used corn meal to coat the pan before proofing. They turned out great.

What kind of yeast did you use?The "active Dry Yeast" available here needs proofing. We need to put in warm water with a teaspoon of sugar and set it aside for 10 minutes it foams up then you add to the dough.Do you mean active "Instant" yeast. That is the kind of powder you add directly to the dough. Generally its sifted into the flour for better mixing.Please clarifyThank you